Abstract
The argument that modern French communism is a child of the Resistance1 encapsulates the source of much of the credibility which enabled it to become such a formidable political force during the three decades following World War II, but it is also reminiscent of the fact that contingent factors influenced the fortunes of the party, sometimes for the worst, before the war, and that contingent factors militated against its success at the end of the twentieth century (as they militated against the success of that other child of the Resistance, the Gaullist party).
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Notes
R. W. Johnson, The Long March of the French Left (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1981), p. 136.
These figures are from J. Fauvet, Histoire du parti communiste français, vol. I, De la Guerre à la Guerre: 1917–1939 (Paris: Fayard, 1964) and refer to party cards placed with members rather than the larger numbers conveyed to party secretaries.
The very apt expression used by D. Borne and H. Dubeif, La Crise des années 30 (Paris: Seuil, 1989), p. 127.
See, for example, R. Bordier, ’36, la fête (Paris: Messidor, 1985).
J. Jackson, The Popular Front in France Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 277.
F. Fejtö, The French Communist Party and the Crisis of International Communism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967), p. 18.
J. Fauvet, Histoire du parti communiste français, vol. II: Vingt-cinq ans de drame (Paris: Fayard, 1965), p. 86.
R. Tiersky, French Communism, 1920–1972 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 114.
J.-Y. Boursier, La Politique du PCF 1939–1945 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992), pp. 209–10.
See A. J. Rieber, Stalin and the French Communist Party 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).
See A. Dansette, Histoire de la libération de Paris (Paris: Plon, 1994).
D. Pickles, French Politics: The First Years of the Fourth Republic (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1953), p. 270.
M. Thorez, Fils du peuple, in Oeuvres Choisies, vol. II (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1966), pp. 488–9.
G. Wright, The Reshaping of French Democracy (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1948), pp. 38–40.
W. Bedell Smith, Trois années à Moscou (Paris: Plon, 1950), p. 198.
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© 2005 Gino G. Raymond
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Raymond, G.G. (2005). Political Credibility. In: The French Communist Party during the Fifth Republic. French Politics, Society and Culture Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230512870_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230512870_2
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